Impermanence: Embracing change every day

Anicca vata sakhara - uppada vayadhammino Uppajjitva nirujjhanti-tesa vupasamo sukho. (Formations truly they are transient, it is their nature to arise and cease, having arisen, then they pass away, their calming and cessation - is bliss). At every Buddhist funeral in our country, this very Pali verse is recited by the Buddhist monks who perform the funeral rites, thus reminding the congregation of the impermanent nature of life.

The fact of impermanence means that reality is never static but is dynamic throughout, and modern scientists are realising this to be the basic nature of the world without any exception.

Impermanence, as the Sanskrit word anitya or Paliword anicca, are generally translated, is one of the three characteristics of the phenomenal world, or the world in which human beings live. The other two characteristics are dukkha (suffering) and anatma (the absence of anything, enduring, or an Ego). Everything that exists in this world is impermanent.

No element of physical matter or any concept remains unchanged, including the skandha (aggregate) that make up individual persons. Things in the world change in two ways. First, they change throughout time. Second, everything in this world is influenced by other elements of the world, and thus all existence is contingent upon something else. Because of this state of interdependence, everything that exists in this world is subject to change and is thus impermanent.

There are 5 lessons life has taught the writer on embracing change

1. Acknowledge change: Be aware that change can happen in your life. This means understanding that things can and will be different from how they are now. Acknowledging change is allowing it to happen when it unfolds instead of approaching change from a place of denial and resistance.

2. Accept change: Instead of resisting, allow change to unfold and try to understand what's transforming and why. Embracing the situation can help deal with the change effectively, make the necessary shifts in your life to embrace the change, and help you move forward after the event.

3. Learn from the experience: If you accept and embrace change, you will start looking for and finding lessons in it. Change becomes your greatest teacher, but only if you give yourself permission to learn from it.

4. Recognize you're growing stronger: When you accept, embrace, and learn from change, you inevitably grow stronger. The ability to continuously accept change allows you to become as solid as a rock in the midst of violent storms all around you - even if you feel afraid.

5. Embrace the wisdom: An important exercise is to step back and consider yourself, your life, objectively and without judgment. In so doing, you can begin to see how you have created a story about who you believe yourself to be, your definitions of yourself. Upon mindful examination, you may find that you have unwittingly imposed countless limitations and constraints on yourself and your beliefs about what you are. However, if you can see through the illusions and see how these walls have been constructed, you can begin to take them down and redefine who you believe yourself to be - in effect, effectively facing the changes in life.

Whether in your relationship with family or society or at work, embracing impermanence and change pulls you out of the fixation with your own thwarted wants or desires. It enables you to put your energies into another form, another venue that could lead to new kinds of fulfilment and positive energy.

Suffering

Buddhism teaches us that impermanence is the cause of suffering, because we attempt to hold on to things that are constantly changing, on the mistaken assumption that those things are permanent.

The Buddha said Nirvana is the only thing that lies beyond the reach of change, because it exists beyond the conceptual dualism of existence or nonexistence.

We cannot say of anything, animate or inanimate, organic or inorganic, "this is lasting"; for even while we are saying this, it would be undergoing change. All is fleeting; the beauty of flowers, the bird's melody, the bee's hum, and a sunset's glory.

Suppose on a beautiful weekend, you are gazing on a gorgeous sunset. You see the whole western heavens are glowing with roseate hues; but you are aware that within half an hour all these glorious tints will have faded away into a dull ashen grey. You see them even now melting away before your eyes, although your eyes cannot place before you the conclusion which your reason draws.

Comparison

And what conclusion is that? That conclusion is that you never, even for the shortest time that can be named or conceived, see any abiding colour, any colour which truly is. Within the millionth part of a second the whole glory of the painted heavens has undergone an incalculable series of mutations.

One shade is supplanted by another with a rapidity which sets all measurements at defiance, but because the process is one to which no measurements apply, your reasoning refuses to lay an arrestment on any period of the passing scene.

According to the teachings of the Buddha, life is comparable to a river. It is a progressive moment, a successive series of different moments, joining together to give the impression of one continuous flow. It moves from cause to cause, effect to effect, one point to another, one state of existence to another, giving an outward impression that it is one continuous and unified movement, where as in reality it is not.

The river of yesterday is not the same as the river of today. The river of this moment is not going to be the same as the river of the next moment. So does life. It changes continuously, becomes something or the other from moment to moment.

Take for example the life of an individual. It is a fallacy to believe that a person would remain the same person during his entire life time. He changes every moment. He actually lives and dies but for a moment, or lives and dies moment by moment, as each moment leads to the next. A person is what he is in the context of the time in which he exists.

It is an illusion to believe that the person you have seen just now is the same as the person you are just now seeing or the person whom you are seeing now will be the same as the person you will see after a few moments. Impermanence and change are thus the undeniable truths of our existence.

What is real is the existing moment, the present that is a product of the past, or a result of the previous causes and actions. Because of ignorance, an ordinary mind conceives them all to be part of one continuous reality. But in truth they are not. They keep on changing.